Empathy as Design Tool | Pratt Institute School of Design

Having high empathy is an advantage for our social relationships. It is also a crucial tool for designers in communications design. Is empathy important or reliable to affect our life, like our learning ability? Or is it just an inherent characteristic of creatures that like our bodies or even something else? As designers, Is it worth our so much attention, or are there other ways for us to solve users’ problems?

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Drowning

The feeling of emotionally drowning is the feeling that the empath always experiences. They can absorb positive and negative energy just by being in someone’s presence.

Cage

In crowded or busy places, this sensitivity may seem magnified to the point of being almost unbearable.

Emotion Granularity Chart

Then when we talk about emotion, there is another ability called emotion granularity. Emotion granularity is the ability to get really specific about our emotional experience. It’s necessary for the receivers to have empathy.

View Empathy as a substance transformation

What if the process of empathizing is a substance transformation? A chemical reaction is a process that leads to the chemical transformation of one set of chemical substances to another.

Experiment Video

I chose to use sound visualization for my project because of the unique way our brains process vocalizations. Studies have shown that it takes just one-tenth of a second for our brains to begin recognizing emotions conveyed by non-verbal sounds like laughter, growls of anger, or cries of sadness.